To think that a lot of us will be in trouble when we retire...

[Fleetheart]

This generation seems very unlike the previous ones in that we take out loans for everything, buy holidays on credit, kitchens on credit, new clothes etc etc. And pension schemes are getting less and less generous. And most of us don’t understand them anyway. I’ve always earned well, but have split up from partner, so still have s lot on my mortgage, no savings, and really not very much in my random pension schemes most of which are money purchase schemes and won’t pay a lot. And I know many people of my age (mid 50s) who have no pension at all. And meanwhile the govt is being less and less generous. What will become of us all?

We will be totally screwed. Since we haven't loved in england most of our adult lives, we have no social security payments. So no stste pensions. And I can't work here at all on our visa, so we are too poor to pay into a pension plan. If we stay over here and eventually become citizens, maybe we will come up with some sort of plan. But at 38, it doesn't seem likely.

@flyingspaghettimonster I think it's only 30 years of contributions so you should be able to do that at 38 for state pension? (If it exists of course).

It’s 35 years now

It will be 40 years then 45 then 50.

@Gin96 the pension age will probably be 5 years later in 30 years time lol so there may still be time for the pp! Plus you can makes up the difference can't you? I know I can pay for the years I was at uni if I wanted to, but no need as it stands.

For those worrying about NI contributions. If your state pension is your only income and you don’t have the full amount of years, then you can claim something called pension credit to top it up. This will make it the same amount it would have been, had you made full contributions. I don’t think this is widely advertised as obviously they would rather people just paid the extra and made up the lost years! But it is available, right now at least.

Some “thinktank” suggested that retirement age should be moved to 70, and then to 75 by 2035. In order to give elderly people purpose in life apparently. It was in the news.

My time to go won’t be when the money runs out, it will be when I no longer enjoy life.

I just think that it's more complicated than that in practice. Unless you're in a lot of pain then for most people they may see the desirability of life ending soon but never now. My grandmother (the one with the brain tumour) would sometimes say that she'd lived too long and she wished she could join my grandfather (who died a few years earlier), but at other times she'd say how determined she was to last long enough to see my brother and I's children (she didn't, sadly). She didn't have capacity to do it anyway by the end, but I don't think she'd have chosen to die even when her quality of life was objectively quite low. I think she'd have always had one more thing to hang around for.

I had a family member effectively commit suicide by refusing food and medical treatment because she'd been healthy all her life and couldn't cope with becoming frail with old age. I don't know how common this is though.

Ive worked in hospitals and am amazed at some of the cases of invasive treatment being pushed on dementia patients by family. I mean what's the point? Dementia doesn't get better.

Obviously if you’re too sick or frail to work then you can’t. But equally, the notion of retiring at 65 (or 60 as was the case for women until recently) is completely unsustainable. Also, when these ages were introduced, peoples working life span was a lot longer in proportion to their retirement life span. People would work from 18, or 16 (or even younger, 14 or 15) work through til 65 and then maybe potter round the garden for a few years and die after 10 years or so. Far fewer people went to university so it would be relatively few people who didn’t start working til they were 21 or older.

Nowadays about half of the population seem to go to uni, they often have a gap year/ travelling too so don’t start full time work until their 20s and with life expectancy increasing, they can expect to live to over 80. It’s simply unsustainable for ‘the state’ to fund people having retirements of 20 or 30 years.

I also think there’s a lot to be said for keeping mentally engaged; lots of evidence to show that’s it’s actually very bad for your mental health to go from working full time to doing nothing.

Personally I intend to take my work pension in a few years time, before I’m 60, but carry on working in a part time capacity and to be honest I’d happily do that indefinitely as long as I’m able. I’ve paid shedloads into my work pension over the years though and my pension has been the driving factor in working full time since my youngest child turned 4.

It’s different if you physically cannot work, but looking around me I see a lot of people, women in particular, who choose to work part time or in easier (but low paid) jobs without considering how they’re leaving themselves extremely vulnerable. (I’m not talking about women caring for young children, I’m talking women in my generation whose children have grown up.)
So to some extent there’s a choice here. If people want to have a reasonable standard of living in their older age, they need to accept that it’ll only happen by paying for it.

Yes, as I say, i’m not ruling out changing my mind later on. Things I thought I couldn’t have coped with, I have coped with. So maybe I’ll want to be around longer than I think I would now. It’s impossible to say with any certainty. I know that if it came to it, my DC would look after me but I so desperately don’t want to put them in that position. I see friends now having to care for elderly parents and it really takes it toll.

The care homes and pharmacies are very keen on us all living longer. It's not hard to work out why when you see how much the fees are. I'm not knocking them , the staff in my dads place are very dedicated , but it's so easy to be cynical about it all. There are a few care home owners around who are doing very well out of all this I'm sure.
I bet a few politicians have shares in these companies too.

Granny farming

It’s getting grim round here

The care homes and pharmacies are very keen on us all living longer. It's not hard to work out why when you see how much the fees are. I'm not knocking them , the staff in my dads place are very dedicated , but it's so easy to be cynical about it all. There are a few care home owners around who are doing very well out of all this I'm sure.

And quite a few care home companies going out of business because, even with most of the staff on NMW or barely above, they can't make much money at it.

I used to work in the kitchen of a Bupa care home. Residents were charged somewhere around £1000 a week. The head cook had to budget their meals at 90p per meal. So less than £20 a week per person. Yes of course they had to. cover the cost of carers, running costs of the home etc. But if I was paying 1k a week I’d expect a little more than £20 to spent on my food! Let’s face it, is a care home really the “ideal” for anyone? Regardless of how good it is. I look at it this way, if i’m compos mentis enough to know I’m facing going into one of these places then I’m capable of offing myself. If I’m not then it doesn’t matter if it’s shit as I won’t be aware of it!

To be fair, the care home I reluctantly found for my parents - who were 99 and 96, so I gave it a fair go - was fantastic. My mum blossomed in there and Dad’s only complaint was the food was too good and there was too much of it. Realistically, I should have bitten the bullet a year earlier because their quality of life improved dramatically.

There was an interesting BBC TV news piece today about Singapore where elderly people are increasingly being employed in the restaurant and fast food industry. They are valued because they have excellent people skills, as well as a lifetime of experience of food preparation. The elderly people enjoy being busy, having colleagues and being out of the home.

Just one example of how society will adapt to having an ageing population and possibly in ways that we can't yet see.

A universal income is another thing that hasn't been mentioned much here but is a real possibility in the future, if AI takes all the jobs.

Can’t see that happening in Maccies in the U.K. somehow!

People tend to be physically and mentally slower as they get older. All the Maccies counters I’ve ever stood at have been manic. The young people staffing them seem to work so fast and efficiently. Could older people cope with that pace?

I can imagine “fast food” in Singapore might encompass street food type of establishments. Stir frying stuff and handing it over? I may be wrong. But to my mind it would be very different from a KFCor McD’s counter

Singapore has both street food and western style fast food (McDonald’s, KFC etc) in abundance

Urgh, just googled fast food in Singapore. It’s full of fried chicken shops! My quaint little notion of Singaporean standing at a big stir fry counter at a street market making delicious noodles seems sadly way behind the times!

http://thirdforcenews.org.uk/tfn-news/raising-state-pension-means-many-scots-will-never-retire?utmcampaign=Oktopost-2019-08+General+Campaign&utmmcontent=Oktopost-facebook-&utmmedium=social&utmmsource=facebook

Yes, it's alarming to think how many will not be prepared, and even if you are it's much worse than it used to be. My FIL (bank manager) retired at 50, now still enjoying his large pension at 86. He's been retired for longer than he worked!

@Celaeno makes an excellent point about women choosing easier and/or part time jobs. Storing up trouble for the future.

I hear that competition for teaching assistant jobs is fierce, because well-qualified women are applying for them. This might be because they want to work around their own children, or because they fancy doing something a bit gentler than the career they trained in, but I look at these women and think, cop on to yourselves. Yes, the cut and thrust of a professional career is tough, but how many men do you see prejudicing their future earning potential by taking part time, lower paid, less demanding jobs? Not bloody many.

Look at how poorly nursery staff are paid. Look at care workers. What gender are they, usually? Why do so many women take these jobs then spend all of their available cash on a mortgage, leaving little over for a pension?

Of course, what is interesting is the number of threads complaining about the cost of nursery, or the cost of caring for an elderly person in a home. Would you prefer the people delivering that care to earn even less? Care homes go out of business all the time because they can’t charge enough to cover costs. Ditto nurseries, particularly in view of what they are paid to cover ‘free’ sessions. It is really hard to make either of those enterprises pay.

I work in one of the professions in a tough industry dominated by men. I often think, wouldn’t it be great to work part time in a flower shop or a cafe, or bake cakes for a living? Usually when I’m getting up at 6 am for the commute with an intellectually demanding day ahead and an endless to do list.

However, I am 47 and I know that if I want a comfortable retirement I need to knuckle down, earn as much as I can and stash it away. If I retire at 57 I’ll still have to fund myself through ten years before my state pension and occupational pension, linked to state pension age, kick in. I want the same lifestyle I have now.